Power Struggle
Absurdly enough, I had been unconsciously dismissing Cha Jun-jae. In the past, I’d even sneered at him, asking if he’d only gotten famous because of his looks. But after ending up alone with him for a certain reason, I finally realized it—I had always recognized, deep in my bones, just how remarkable he was. In family background, appearance, acting talent, every single aspect. The moment that forced me to acknowledge what had only been lurking in my subconscious came from one thing: Cha Jun-jae frequently, almost as if unconsciously, tore himself down in front of me.
When he did that, a rebellious spirit would rise in me, and I’d end up proving his worth with my own mouth. That the man I had wanted to defeat my entire life wasn’t someone so trivial. I would huff and puff like I’d heard my dearest friend insulted and launch into passionate speeches. But the more I watched him, the more I wondered if this was actually his tactic all along.
“Eun-dam.”
“Yeah?”
“There was something I wanted to ask you earlier.”
Cha Jun-jae lifted a steaming bundle of ramen with listless chopsticks. A sense of foreboding hit me; I couldn’t even take a bite and set my chopsticks down. Just as I expected, he wrapped his arms around my waist and leaned his head against me like someone in pain. With his eyes lowered in a seductive way, he continued.
“This part. I’m not sure. I don’t know how to put the right emotion into it.”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Just help me out. I feel a little bad about only playing around.”
Naturally, I had zero experience working with an actor as well-known as Cha Jun-jae. I had only ever collaborated with rookies and those who were practically unknowns. The problem was that he kept coming to me with all these questions.
“This is how I was thinking of doing it.”
He really had an ambiguous way of behaving. Feeling his bare chest and bare arms hugging me from behind, I sucked in a sharp breath. He pressed his cheek against my back, sharing his warmth. I felt every bit of it.
Cha Jun-jae’s acting skills had, to put it bluntly, long since moved beyond the learning stage. He hadn’t won that rookie award just to kill time.
I believed that no matter how an actor interpreted a character, as long as they didn’t veer into the absolute worst direction, it was fine. I even liked ad-libs that came out on the spot. If it deviated from the picture I had in mind, we could compromise. Even if he layered his own interpretation onto the character I created, I didn’t mind.
Which meant this wasn’t acting guidance or anything of the sort—it was a man and a woman’s little scheme. Cha Jun-jae was making a move on me. He was rubbing the tip of his nose lightly against my back, holding my waist with his hands, and toying with me by telling me not to eat the ramen. What he wanted was for me to eventually lose my mind. He probably hoped I would kiss him, embrace him, and become desperate for him. Just like what happened on the sofa last time. That had been me getting swept up in the ripe atmosphere. There wouldn’t be a second lapse in judgment.
Above all, until Cha Jun-jae revealed his true feelings, there was nothing between us. The two of us clearly wanted different things right now.
“You’re doing well. Your acting is getting better and better.”
So both of us were stuck in this ridiculous performance. It was a battle for dominance disguised as acting instruction. For me, just a few words from Cha Jun-jae would be enough. I want you. Nothing more, nothing less. I wished he would express that he wanted me so badly it brought him to tears. I hated the way he approached me as if he was simply waiting for me to come to him. It was like he didn’t want to bruise his pride or lose anything.
“By the way, Jun-jae.”
Even though he claimed it was acting practice, Cha Jun-jae showed no sign of releasing the arms wrapped around me. His ambition had already moved one step ahead, burying his nose in my hair. I tried to pry the arms from my waist, but they were locked tight. This guy had been an expert at putting on an innocent act since high school—eighteen levels deep.
“Aren’t you putting too much strength into your hands?”
But when it came to putting on an act, I was one step ahead of him. I pressed my palm firmly against Cha Jun-jae’s cheek. A grown man walking around shirtless from the middle of the day, giving back hugs, and keeping his eyes lowered as if he wanted something. I had known for a long time that Cha Jun-jae’s innocent facade was as hard as a turtle’s shell.
“Aren’t you just doing this because you want to hold me?”
“No.”
I thought a direct fastball would work on a man who was being so ambiguously coy. But the moment I pointed out his feelings, Cha Jun-jae slowly loosened his hands. He pulled them away as if it really had been acting practice and erased all emotion from his face.
That left me burning with frustration at the little hypocrite. If this was Cha Jun-jae’s intention, it was a resounding success. I was floundering, caught in his clever trap. I wanted to seize victory in this ridiculous game of love and war. I grabbed his cheeks so he couldn’t run away, closed my eyes tightly, and kissed him. It was a light kiss pressed to his lips. More than emotion, it was a kiss filled with calculation and strategy.
“Even after this, you’re saying you have no feelings for me?”
Let me stay by your side. Let’s share a room, just the two of us. Tell me how you want our first kiss to be. Those were the things he should have asked before. He should have said them first. But Cha Jun-jae was trying to seize control through silence. Pretending to focus on acting with lies. If he thought his method of manipulating others would work forever, he was sorely mistaken. Having thrown away all pretense, I was ready to go all in. I couldn’t spend another ten-plus years in this kind of tug-of-war with him. If it was no, then it was no. If there was something, he needed to let me make a choice. Whether I would accept Cha Jun-jae as a man or not.
“Eun-dam.”
But the method Cha Jun-jae chose was—
“I’m not what you think I am.”
“And what do I think you are?”
I spoke rather curtly. From his overall expression, Cha Jun-jae looked almost blank. It was nothing short of deception.
“The kind of feelings a man has for a woman. That sort of thing.”
“You’re saying you don’t have any of that at all.”
“I don’t.”
It was a lie. The face Cha Jun-jae had worn back when we were in school appeared before me. Artificial, unusually warm, yet indifferent to everything. Every time he pulled out that old expression to hide his true feelings, it made me burn with anger. When I finally dragged his black heart into the light, what would he say then?
Instead of pressing him, I decided to use persuasion. That was the fun way to do it. Without counting how many times, I stole his lips. It was a new rule that had formed between him and me. No matter what, Cha Jun-jae could not reject me.
“So you’re saying you don’t see me as a woman at all.”
“……”
“Hm?”
I even managed to stop him from lying. There was one advantage to him being shirtless. Cha Jun-jae’s body, which was turning redder by the second, was answering for him. How could he hide the sincerity spreading across his skin like dye in water? Unfortunately, only his lips were trained in the art of lying.
“Cha Jun-jae. Jun-jae.”
As if driving the point home, I sat on his thigh and let out a soft, teasing laugh. True to his profession, Cha Jun-jae endured it with an indifferent expression.
“If I asked you to film a bed scene with me, would you do that too?”
Realizing I was deliberately trying to mess with him, Cha Jun-jae’s face grew slightly colder.
“You want to film something like that with me?”
“Why? You don’t want to? You said if I looked at you once a month, you’d do anything.”
Half teasing, half sincere, with the mindset that since he was deceiving me, I would deceive him too. Having read that sarcasm, Cha Jun-jae’s eyes sank into deep thought. His face was so expressionless it looked as if all emotion had been bleached away. In a gentle voice that seemed directed at me yet somehow not, he spoke the next words.
“I know I made an unreasonable request to you, Eun-dam. That’s why I have no choice but to lose to you. I also know you hate having to keep seeing a guy you dislike.”
Since he had taken his shirt off and was acting so boldly, I thought a few mischievous jokes would be fine. Wanting faster progress had undeniably made me impatient. If his one weakness was me, what if he got down on his knees and begged to be loved? Such shallow, childish thoughts. But the eyes looking down at me were so serious and heavy that they wiped away any interest-driven ideas.
“Even so, I get hurt too. More than you think.”
Out of all the things he could have said, he chose to talk about being hurt. My immature heart faltered in the face of his sincere resentment. It was as if he hated me for trying to test his feelings.
“Because you have that much influence over me.”
After that, Cha Jun-jae left the room. The ramen had swollen beyond recognition and couldn’t be eaten. Having caused a scene, he went up to the second floor and shut himself away.
The next day, seeing that he still hadn’t come down, I was overwhelmed with regret. Had I thought I was more precious than him? That I could say anything to him because I hated him and he was hurting? I was even engaging in pointless self-reflection. And just when I had finally concluded that it would be better to cleanly end things with him, an incident occurred that forced me to knock on his door the following day.